The Blackberry Z10, labelled as RIM’s “big gamble” by the media is set to hit stores in March. In fact, they have already appointed Alicia Keys as their new Creative Director, receiving a reasonable amount of attention.

For quite an extended period of time after the launch of many touch screen smartphones from various companies, RIM continued to produce smartphones with keyboards. In the eyes of a regular consumer like myself, at first glance, the keyboard was the main product differentiation prior to further considerations. As the following old advertisement will go to show, Blackberry smartphones had be positioned to meet the needs of those consumers that spent time on their smartphones writing e-mails. As said in the commercial for the Blackberry Bold: “…try writing a thousand e-mails on a touch screen”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=g2TyHvxXLAA#at=16

Despite not finding touch screens difficult to operate personally, I can see that some consumers will enjoy the keyboard aspect of Blackberry products. But how is RIM planning on re-positioning Blackberry when their latest Blackberry product completely backs away from the keyboard differentiator and conforms to the popular touch screen style of smartphones?

The firm says the Z10 has been “reinvented” but complaints on social media platforms have come rolling in claiming that the product is ‘copying’ Apple’s iPhone design and being a ‘ripoff’.

With this transition to launching a new touch screen smartphone, I feel the most interesting aspect RIM has done to help re-position itself on the market is to launch the Blackberry Q10 which consists of a physical keyboard. This may be able to help Blackberry grow its market share while still retaining consumers that still loves Blackberry for its BBM and keyboard. It is most unfortunate however, that in the launch of these two Blackberry 10 smartphones that the Blackberry Z10 has completely overshadowed that of the Blackberry Q10 with the physical keyboard due to negative press.

The Blackberry 10 will  offer users over 70,000 applications. Sounds like a lot? Well, it is only a tenth of what iPhone and Andriod has to offer its users. Will today’s consumers be able to make do without Instagram?

Source: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2270703/BlackBerry-launches-Z10-keyboard-looks-just-like-Apples-iPhone.html